Call quality and dropouts

The call quality is generally OK although sometimes you hear some sort of a mild echo in the background. Video calls are average, there is a slight lag between motion and voice and the video isn't smooth with lots of frame skipping. For fun it is great but it needs to improve a lot to be used for business reasons.

As a new network, I can understand that they have teething problems but I've experienced a lot of dropouts that can't be explained. Here is a list of issues that I've experienced. (please drop me a line at alhatu@ozemail.com.au if you want to share some of your experiences with the service)

- Call drops even though the signal strength is maximum
- Call gets diverted to voice mail despite the signal strength being at maximum
- Call is received, you can hear the other side but they can't hear you
- The signal strength goes from max to min continuously
- Despite having a roaming agreement with Vodafone, the phone doesn't switch to 2G despite no 3G signal
- The inability to make phone calls despite having a maximum signal strength

I've done the right thing and reported most if not all of the above to the Customer service line. (See Customer Service section)

I've been told by a "3" support person that if you switch from a 3G zone to a 2G zone, the call will drop and that they are working on fixing this with Vodafone.

On Friday the 25th of July, the network had a major outage where no calls could be made or received for over 4.5 hours from around 6 PM onwards. This is a major concern and highlights a single point of failure within the network which indicates either a bad design or some cutting corners. In any case, Hutchison should provide some explanation to its customers on what happened and how are they going to ensure it won't happen again. The Customer Care staff have informed me that Hutchison will provide and explanation in the papers, if they do, I'll post or provide a link here.

By late September 2003, the call quality has improved significantly over what is has been over the first few months. There are far less call dropouts and those who try to contact me are not complaining so much about getting busy tones, etc...

Dan from the Northern Beaches adds these comments:

"It must have been early days when you experienced the above. I've been on three with both 606 & 808 for a few weeks now and either have not gone thru the above, found a work around or the problems occurred only last nite for a few hrs when there was some network problem. Could be them getting the Frenchs Forest tower operational with the existing one at Clontarf? I don't know.

I find the phones too eager to switch to 2g which is a poor effort by Vodafone in Manly anyway, so I lock it on 3G. So I am on or off (rather than switching) now but am actually on more often.
On a 606 was unable to get on 3G off 2G this morning (had been roaming there on flaky Vodafone district for an hour) as a video was waiting in a msg attachment from 50mins earlier (sent from 200 metres away!). I was in 3G area for 10mins. Only solution was to turnoff/on. Not good. I do know that regardless of Three, Vodafone is a problem as when I was on Vodafone contract could take up to 2 weeks to send sms to Telstra. I believe & know a lot of Three's probs are really Vodafone. 
NB it has been made clear this area is a blackspot for 3G so no complaint there! Its the switching back and the Vodafone.

The only other long term problem is the 808 in the reading USIM error. They replaced mine with a 606 after brought up the Consumer Affairs act, but I decided I wanted an 808 on another contract later on anyway. Possibly overcome the error by using the contacts in the phone rather than USIM. Haven't had long enuff to try. But they replaced it in a flash when I mentioned the 2 logs with service.

The bottomline is its a good deal. I'm not a heavy user and I like technology and there's something for being there in the early days of technology. The internet stuff doesn't interest me though I've found email immediate." (26/7/2003)